VMware Gets Into Cloud Consulting Services, Makes Benchmarking Acquisition
VMware is the latest major technology market player to get into the cloud consultancy game with this week’s formation of VMware Accelerate Advisory Services, a new business group of former IT executives that aims to lend their expertise to CIOs seeking to make cloud moves.
The company boasts that Accelerate brings metric-driven customization for customer cloud deployments. By benchmarking an organization’s migration to virtualization and cloud services by way of what VMware refers to as Key Performance Indexes (KPIs), Accelerate can identify the best way to leverage the cloud to boost business value and come up with a strategy. Of course, having an inside connection to VMware partners and experts doesn’t hurt, either.
As part of Accelerate’s launch, VMware bought certain assets from Virginia-based benchmarking firm Info Tech Health Check (iTHC), including 3,500 metrics for 20 industries across four key geographies. Those metrics, as well as the broader Accelerate services, will be made available to outside VMware consulting partners, as well.
VMware says that Accelerate was born after years of service and technology delivery, and that it’s a result of the huge knowledge base its accrued. I have to admit, making metrics the differentiator is indeed, well…different. But given VMware’s role as the hypervisor of choice for a significant chunk of the cloud marketplace, it’s in a good position to push the concept.
But the timing here is interesting. I can’t help but notice that VMware made this announcement the same week as the OpenStack Conference here in San Francisco. Open source cloud platform OpenStack isn’t a major threat to the entirely proprietary VMware vSphere just yet, but it will be soon. And with OpenStack expanding its enterprise appeal, VMware may well be feeling pressure to cement its position.
Leveraging its brand name appeal and inarguable expertise to turn a new wave of CIOs onto vSphere may be a move with an eye towards maintaining the long-term viability of the platform. After all, a locked-in customer is a repeat customer. And besides, services have better margins for VMware, anyway.
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